Sunday, 23 August 2015

The seven-week scan with the two blinking heartbeats. Two! The horror in the eyes of friends as they congratulated me. The planning for two of everything. Pickle's pride and excitement at being a big sister to twins.

Then the weeks of rolling nausea and exhaustion which left me barely able to care for Pickle, myself and my two growing beings, and entirely unable to to do any housework or stay awake for an entire day. Pickle has been amazing. I am very grateful for how she accepted and adapted to my less fun state.

The 12-week scan, my first chance to see them properly. But... one heartbeat. Just one now. One healthy and very active baby; one sad forever-bud adrift within me. No heartbeat and no future. We will never know who it would have been if the folds had been crisper or the edges more neatly aligned and the whole wonderful origami of evolution had - Ta dah! - made a baby, a human instead of this tiny cloven-brained frog with no jump. We will never know.

Very, very much (I have pinned my sanity on this), I hope we will know who this other baby will be as it and I bloom together towards birth. Because I am still carrying my little frog, there is a risk of losing both, but I want to spend all the time we have together, 70 more minutes or 70 more years, believing in this life and preparing myself for the full-frontal heart collision that is motherhood again.

It is time for something really spectacular and wonderful to happen to Pickle and I. Twins seemed the miracle which promised us happiness and joy. One baby is miracle enough.